Slaughtered Lamb
by reminiscent-afterthought
Summary: In a war, what is the difference between sacrifice and suicide…except the eye of the beholder? Is there a difference?


**A/N: **My first Gundam Seed fic, but I found the topic of discussion (or monologue in this case) an interesting one. Feel free to point out any errors – this is suppose to be IC with the first series and the prologue of DESTINY – and let me know what you think.

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**Slaughtered Lamb**

What is sacrifice? What does it mean? To give your life for something – or someone – else? To give it for what you believe in?

But I wonder, if you can so easily cast your life aside, is it really worth anything? Is it really sacrifice? Or is it just a means to an end, an excuse that can justify an escape? Suicide maybe? That's the term they use, right? When a person's life matters so little to themselves, they would actively cause their own deaths to avoid prolonging it.

But it's hard to say, in a war. Throwing one's life away is no longer a matter of…I don't know, stepping in front of a bus or putting a pistol to one's head or swallowing cyanide. Now it's…bigger.

I think JOSH-A was the first I heard. The sacrifice of the headquarters' leading officials and the Eurasian troops in order to wipe out more than half of ZAFT's fighting strength on Earth. The Archangel had almost been sacrificed along with it – and I'm still using the word "sacrifice". The Archangel alone left the front lines in a refusal to become a needless lamb…but if the objective was to wipe out the ZAFT forces with the Cyclops system, why were the sacrifices of so many lives necessary? It took just one man to push the button and activate the system.

And who remembers the names of the men who lost their lives that day? Who _can_ remember, when every person who knew them is dead as well. Maybe some had civilian relatives. Relatives that lived in more neutral territory…

Like Orb. And that makes me think still of my father's – adopted father I suppose, but in truth he was the only father I ever knew, and knowing what _he_ did, perhaps a better one – death. I was young then; naïve, but in truth I still cannot understand why it was necessary for the leaders of Orb to stay behind for the destruction of Morgenroete and its mass driver. While I understand it was necessary to prevent it from falling into others' hands and tilting the axis of the Bloody Valentine War, why was it necessary for so many men to die for it? Again, it took just one man to push the button.

And I can't help but think of Athrun. Of how he finally defeated the strike, designating the Aegis to self destruct with enough time to escape…why hadn't the Alaska forces done that? Why hadn't the leaders of Orb? My father?

I didn't understand it at all; my father had been right, as had Kisaka. I knew nothing of the war, even as I lived through it. But I learnt, slowly.

And one of the things I found was this, sacrifice. Such an odd term, because in the crudest sense it _was_ suicide. The laws of the military, the feelings of the heart. The leader falls with his land. Countless individuals step into the paths of guns or lasers or…well, anything really, in order to save something or someone…or simply put an end to their own existence.

I know, sometimes it can't be avoided. Death I mean; there are situations in which someone ultimately does die, and there's nothing anyone can do to change that. Or maybe there isn't, but that seems like a child's thought now, because too many people have died. But there are other times when they can.

I think, in a way, it was why I sortied in the Strike Rogue. It was definitely why I followed Athrun to Genesis as he flew the Justice. Because it was something I had learnt over the months: the value of life, and the strength it took to continue living it.

At least I was right about that; we escaped in the Strike Rogue together and the Justice self destructed, taking the Genesis with it.

But you already know all this, so why am I reiterating it? I suppose, in a way, I'm still trying to understand this. This thing called "sacrifice". Much of it seems to be needless, or pointless. Amounting to nothing. I think of Blue Cosmos, and Patrick Zala, and their ideals. Everything they gave up to exterminate the other, and yet it was ultimately denied as the war came to an end and a treaty was signed upon Junius Seven. And all the people whose names I cannot remember at the end of this bloody journey…and those I never even knew. People who fought without even truly believing their cause. People who fought for reasons that could have been preserved without fighting. People whose reasons became warped or manipulated along the way.

Did it take each of those lives to bring the war to an end? I think not, and I cannot help but wonder if many of them chose to fight simply to avoid the torture of staying behind. I know I was guilty of that more than once, and at times restrained from doing so as well. There were times as well, where my own life seemed insignificant in the world; my cheek sometimes stings in an echo of Kira slapping me that day, like a reminder for preservation.

I can't speak for many others; I am not them, and for the most part I do not know them. The world is a large place after all, filled with Naturals and Coordinators both, and even if it weren't, war would probably have found a different rift to break apart. But I can speak, somewhat, for the people I know. Of my father, for now I finally understand the weight of the responsibilities he bore, and the blame to which I myself added to. Maybe, in some twisted way, he felt that his atonement, or maybe he had felt that by meeting Kira and Athrun, I no longer needed him in my life and there was no other reason for him to stay. And Athrun, hurt by his father and this endless war – the final words he could not fulfil because it went against what he fought for – was willing to blow himself up with the Justice in order to put his father's final strike with Genesis to an end.

I – he – or we I suppose, proved that sacrifice unnecessary. The Justice was demolished, but a machine was a far cry from a human life. But at that moment I felt I was still mourning something. And even later, as we started up discussion with the PLANTS and the Earth Alliance base at Washington, I sometimes found myself thinking about all the death I had witnessed upon the battlefield.

We were remembered because we survived the war. So did countless sacrifices over the last year mean anything? Few remembered them; fewer still mourned. Suicides were looked at an then forgotten, but sacrifices were supposed to be a glorious thing.

They were a lot harder to distinguish in war.


End file.
